Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

coondoggie writes "If you needed any more evidence as to how important unmanned aircraft have become to the US military operations, the US Air Force today said drones have amassed over one million combat hours flown. While that number is impressive, it took the planes known as Global Hawk, Predator and Reaper, almost 14 years to do it, but it could take only a little over another two years to cross the two million mark according to Air Force officials."

Murdering goat herders from 50000 feet by remote control is the most extreme form of cowardice I have ever seen or heard of.

Engaging the Taliban with robots is not a fair fight. It's not honorable. But the point of combat isn't a fair fight, it's not to gain honor, it's to win. And winning means making the fight as unfair as possible- fighting him on your terms, not his, using tactics and terrain where you can use your strengths and your equipment to your advantage. So instead of engaging the Taliban on foot, you engage him in such a way that he can't hit you back. That means engaging masses of Taliban with AK-47 assault rifles with A-10s tankbusters armed with 30 mm gatling guns designed to take out Soviet armor. Chasing down footsoldiers with Apache gunships. Obliterating Taliban headquarters with GPS guided artillery rockets which allow you to put 200 pounds of high explosive within a meter of where you're aiming, from 25 miles away. Or having some guy in Nevada shoot at a truck carrying Taliban leaders with a Reaper drone.

Fighting unfairly is nothing new. That's why armies try to take the high ground, and have better weapons and armor than their enemies, and to attack with superior numbers, and better discipline. Because it makes the fight unfair. Fighting unfairly is how the Battle of Agincourt was won. The English used a weapon- the longbow- that allowed them to take out the French knights before the French could get them. It was unfair, it was dishonorable, and it delivered the French a crushing defeat. And fighting unfairly and dishonorably is also how the Taliban fight. The Taliban have trouble beating the U.S. in a firefight so they have increasingly used improvised explosive devices that allow them to attack U.S. troops without exposing themselves. They pretend they're civilians so the U.S. doesn't know who to hit. They hide in the middle of civilians so that it's impossible to attack them without hitting civilians. They use suicide bombers. Is it fair? Is that honorable? Of course not. But their goal is to win, not to be honorable, or to fight fair.

There are limits to what's acceptable. Killing civilians deliberately, or with reckless disregard, is one of these, and sometimes the U.S. military has done this. And whether the U.S. really should be in Afghanistan at this point is debatable. But fighting unfairly is the whole point and it's naive to argue otherwise.

Engaging the Taliban with robots is not a fair fight. It's not honorable. But the point of combat isn't a fair fight, it's not to gain honor, it's to win.

It's not killing armed Taliban fighters that is the problem, genius, it's flattening entire villages because someone told you that the Taliban might be there, and, oh dear, looks like we were wrong, there's another nail in the coffin of winning hearts and minds.
We are not fighting against the whole of Afghanistan, we are fighting against the Taliban - that's the difference from WWII.

The English used a weapon- the longbow- that allowed them to take out the French knights before the French could get them.

Technically the French tried to charge across a muddy bog in heavy armour, they were sitting ducks once the horses got stuck, so it had less to do with longbows and more to do with a really bad tactical decision.

Main Entry: antidisestablishmentarianism
Definition: originally, opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England, now opposition to the belief that there should no longer be an official church in a country

When my dad was in Viet Nam he flew C-130s in combat situations, and while he was there he led the entire Air Force in combat hours. I remember he had 1,142 combat missions, I don't remember the number of combat hours, but I think his career total including C-141s and non-combat hours was maybe 10-11,000. So he probably had what, 1-2,000 combat hours? It probably cost a million dollars to train him. I realize humans are controlling these things, but still, the efficiency of the whole thing is pretty stagger

UAVs are smaller, more versatile, cheaper to buy and maintain, stealthier, don't get tired(in the traditional sense) and can loiter for greater periods. The Canadians estimate each F35 at $150M. I don't see an advantage for the F35 that UAVs won't meet or exceed in a few more years. The F35 is a plane looking for a mission, like the Comanche attack helicopter was.

Derp, I forgot to add - I think we're seriously going to see what basically amount to Protoss Carriers in the next 10-20 years. A C-130 or AC-130 that can launch and retrieve fighter-style drones from its bays, and not have any latency or signal loss issues over long distances.

The latency for a radio link of 250 miles is in the order of a few milliseconds, and 250 miles is enough range to make finding a semi-mobile "home base" somewhere between tough and impossible.

As a pilot, I routinely hear radio calls 250 miles away when flying 10,000 feet; having a radio-relay essentially circling near the home base at 10,000 feet to support drone activity for a 500 mile circumference is a small price to pay. And the cost of having two such relays circling at 10,0

I'm pretty sure someone thought it was silly to launch airplanes off of boats a hundred or so years ago.

You're missing a crucial bit here. The whole thing is about mobility. Let's say that we need to deploy a whole butt-ton of UAVs somewhere and fast. There really isn't a rapid deployment system for a fleet of UAVs as far as we know.

A carrier plane would allow more than a few possibilities. First, you can resupply and re-arm closer to the actual deployment zone. Broken UAVs can make it back to "base" before

Speaking of signal loss why don't the enemy jam these things? I know they are not RC planes and won't just drop out of the sky if the radio link is cut, but they still need orders to attack and use GPS for navigation.

UAVs are smaller, more versatile, cheaper to buy and maintain, stealthier, don't get tired(in the traditional sense) and can loiter for greater periods. The Canadians estimate each F35 at $150M. I don't see an advantage for the F35 that UAVs won't meet or exceed in a few more years. The F35 is a plane looking for a mission, like the Comanche attack helicopter was.

You will be hard pressed to find a more strident critic of the F-35 than myself. I think it's an overpriced, under-performing, designed-by-committee farce. That said, it's still a fighter. UAV's, thus far, are not. I keep hearing people say "we should get rid of manned planes because UAV's do the job better and cheaper". Well, in many cases, yes. UAV's are pitch-perfect for things like long range maritime surveillance. But we're still going to need manned aircraft for many, many decades. We're nowhere near

The current generation jets like the F-22 and F-35 are already capable of supplying more performance than the human pilot can use by a wide margin. Unless inertial compensator's are invented the current generation will most likely be the last. What would be the point of re-designing for more performance when the current models already exceed the human ability to fly? UAVs might be vulnerable to jet attacks but the question is could a jet destroy 50 UAVs before being targeted and destroyed. The Constellation

Drones can currently only operate in theaters where we have complete air superiority. In a theater where the opposing ground forces had effective surface-to-air or air-to-air defenses drones wouldn't be very practical.

There is a push for the development of UCAVs that would be able to carry air-to-air weapons as well as more directly engage surface-to-air targets but there's still limitations like communication lag or communications in general. A stealthy fighter can operate as long as it has fuel and it doe

A UCAV with a proper sensor setup may have better situation awareness then a pilot. Nor do they get stressed or tired. Main problem would be IFF and target selection, and liability in case of a civilian or blue on blue incident.

No need to out think them when you can blow them up. The army that has the better supply chain wins, and when you can project more force with less supply needs (as with UAVs), you win. These masturbatory chess match fantasies exist only in the minds of pimpled dorks in their basements. That was the warfare of two or three generations ago. Now it is simply who has more guns, or who is more willing to kill civilians.

I like the program and hope to see it expanded. I think the US should have these continually flying sortees all over the world. So if a bad guy shows up in Europe, the US can easily take him out with a Tomahawk missile or two.

No, I wish the countries using these things would buy from the US to keep the profits and have a leaner, more efficient, military. 300 million people don't need $900,000 million spent annually on defense. Imagine how much cheaper it would be to issue everyone a box of bullets and a gun to all upstanding citizens who could pass a standardized test on safety.

Why not just give everyone a sword? Oh, that's right, because the other side might have muskets.
Unless you somehow uninvent all weapons more powerful than a handheld gun with bullets, you're going to lose any future war very quickly.

I like the program and hope to see it expanded. I think the US should have these continually flying sorties all over the world. So if a bad guy shows up in Europe, the US can easily take him out with a Tomahawk missile or two.

I'd prefer if they started by doing this in Manhattan.
I heard there are some non-patriots actually inside the Beltway in D.C.

Gross. Why the hell should my country be policing the world? Why should my tax dollars go towards funding anything other than an investment in my own country. Let the other countries find the bad guys within their borders. I, for one, am sick and tired of funding the unofficial, undeclared world police.

Well for example if Greece is going to default on its debt, it will have financial implications to the US as well. So the US could just let them know that they have a Hellfire missile within range of the Greek parliament.

I guess Greece is not about to default for the lulz but because the economy is really fucked up there. Do you point your gun to a homeless person to oblige him to be a normal prosper citizen? Does it work?

I hope you're joking AC, but I have less faith in society than in your particular bit of nonsense.

As for the world police enthusiast, no, you can create havoc in underdeveloped countries but you can't just start to roam the world skies as "the finger of God" ready to kill anyone anywhere anytime.

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html [pdfernhout.net]... because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all.

(I know, I'm like a broken record on this -- for those who remember broken scratched records...)

I have to admit you have a point as to up-front costs, but if the robots can build and maintain other robots, which they can do to a limited extent already, the operating cost is less of an issue (although the robots can more easily get out of control like in James P. Hogan' s "Two Faces of Tomorrow").

Plus, in general, robots are becoming cheaper than human labor for more and more jobs anyway. See Marshall Brain's presentations, like this one: "Marshall Brain - Automation & Unemployment"

The one big problem with that theory is that everyone needs to recognize that it's wasteful of resources to fight wars. As long as you have one group that's willing to continue the fight, (Al-quida) your stuck.
My biggest complaint about George W. Bush was that he didn't use the war as a chance to break our dependance on foreign oil. Not for environmental reasons, but for basic strategic ones... It's the heights of stupidity to pay for your enemies war.

Remember, the USA helped create bin Laden by funding and training and arming him to fight against the USSR...

Yes, I agree on the need to switch to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The total US military budget is somewhere around US$1 trillion per year (or more with interest). That's a lot of solar panels and wind turbines and home insulation. Amory Lovins (IIRC) suggested decades ago that just the operating cost for two years of the US Persian Gulf deployment force would be enough to imporve US ene

And conveniently I just made a 12 minute YouTube video with some answers (or at least good questions) about that, talking about a balance between five interwoven economies that shifts with cultural change and technological change:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY [youtube.com]

Maybe you would prefer to read this, by John Taylor Gatto, about the socioeconomic system the US drones are defending?http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm [johntaylorgatto.com]"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprise -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put on the books to control the dangerous products of imagination which can never be safely tolerated by a centralized command system."

Why not just get the robot drones to do the work instead of using them against opponents of a rapacious short-term-empire-minded social system based around the USA? And maybe get more people to accept that the answer to "Why do they hate us?" is not so much "Because we are free" but rather more of "Because we support their oppressors"?

See also, for something written by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC:http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm [lexrex.com]"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes...."

The US is still using the proverbial 1% doctrine, where if there's a remote chance the bad guys are there...well fire away! The President even admitted the hit rate for the OBL raid was about 55%. What no one seems to give a shit about is if you adopt that 1% chest-thumping policy, you're wrong 99% and killing innocent civilians. In fact, wasn't it the current regional commander who admitted we're killing far more civilians than tur'rists?

Why can't we figure out that we aren't wanted in that part of the world and just fuck off? They don't want us, they don't need us. Just fuck off before we pick up more bad karma and blowback.

If you know your neighbor beats his wife and threatens to kill her, and she doesn't say anything, do you stay silent? What if you heard the story from a coworker, or from your brother across the country?

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think most people would agree that they have a moral obligation to interfere in someone's life in some situations. There's a line somewhere, but it's probably different for everybody. Now what happens when the oppressor runs an entire country, committing what you consider morally reprehensible acts that are not illegal in that country? Who should have the authority to do something? Nobody? Can we really leave it up to the people when opposing viewpoints are quashed violently?

Sam Harris gave this interesting TED talk [ted.com] that argues that science can answer moral questions like these, though he doesn't really address how we (as in the people of the world) should deal with it. I don't think there is an objective answer to these things...that's what makes international politics so difficult. To some people, removing Gaddafi (when he made clear he wouldn't listen to dissent) is worth it.

To some people, removing Gaddafi (when he made clear he wouldn't listen to dissent) is worth it.

In which case, you say in advance "we are going to remove Gaddafi by military force" not "we will just bomb military installations to protect innocent civilian lives, oopsie we accidentally killed his family by bombing his uncle's house".
Also, you get fucking international agreement for your police/military intervention, including that of Libya's neighbours.

Our mistake was to think we could make Afghanistan and Iraq into functioning democracies just by fighting the bad guys. Democracy has to come from the people, you can't just set one up and expect it to work. You also can't easily defeat a group like the Taliban, as we have discovered.

The Arab Spring is a good example of how it should work. The people rise up, and maybe we help a bit with technology or military assistance as in Libya, but it is very much their revolution and their victory.

As much as I hate to admit it, since on just about everything else he is a total nutjob, but I have to agree with Glen beck when it comes to the ME: It is long past time for us to "Be Switzerland". it is time to pack up our shit and go home, to quit having a bazillion bases and spending money we don't have, it is long past time for us to be Switzerland. We have been stirring up shit since the end of WWII, causing nothing but misery and propping up "el presidente" thugs and scum, it is time to call it and ju

Don't kid yourself, the world needs the US. They might not be thrilled about it, but it is true. Without the US getting their feet dirty and doing all the wet-work, all these other delicate flowers of countries might have to, you know, foot the bill.

Skin color is uncalled for but in the WWII you didn't have "intelligent" weapons so civilian casualties were unavoidable. If the video of the Apache from wikileaks showed something to the world is that intelligent only applies to the form or the actual weapon, still the people behind the weapon fails, get confused or simply think everything is a video game.

Also I didn't knew that you had to be affiliated to any particular political party to criticize unlawful killing of civilians be it from USA, North Korea